


the quiet hours

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Boss/Employee Relationship, Daisy is a shy cutie and Coulson is a smug cutie, Director Daisy Johnson, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Future Fic, Not Canon Compliant, Office, Pre-Relationship, Romance, Sleepiness, Vignette, Workplace Relationship, not season 5 compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 18:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15802437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Daisy likes working late, especially if Coulson keeps her company.





	the quiet hours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tqpannie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tqpannie/gifts), [Persiflage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persiflage/gifts).



She likes the quietness of working late into the night, but all this silence makes the new base seem bigger, too big for her.

But when Coulson is here with her, working late with her (and she knows he knows some nights he doesn’t need to be here, and she knows he stays to keep her company), it doesn’t feel so much like that, the walls neither closing in on her nor getting away, room becoming so big she thinks she’ll have to walk for hours.

All that is in her head, of course, Daisy knows, (and she appreciates the extra “quiet” of Coulson’s presence on quiet nights), that it’s the new job, hoping the feeling will go away, and for now she tries to distract herself by focusing on the details of their new case. Even if the details are of the murderous, gruesome kind.

Coulson is pacing, almost not making a sound, while he reviews the file they’ve compiled. Daisy watches his hands, discreetly fidgety.

“You think an Inhuman did this?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” Coulson replies. Then he thinks it better. “I hope not.”

Daisy raises an eyebrow, to which Coulson stops pacing and takes a seat across the desk.

“We know there’s a push to incentivize anti-Inhuman feeling right now,” he explains. Daisy closes her eyes for a second. Boy does she know. “This would help their cause. Plus…”

He stops himself, making a face like he’s trying to decide whether she should hear what comes next.

“What?”

“You,” he says. Daisy laces her fingers together and leans on the desk, she’s listening. “You’re just getting traction as Director of SHIELD. An Inhuman killing humans, they will use it against you. Paint all Inhumans with the same brush. They’ll say you’re soft on the investigation on purpose. And even if you succeed, catch the killer, they’ll use it to drive a wedge between you and the Inhuman community.”

One can almost see the physicality of it, the way Coulson figures things out. Daisy remembers the same expression on his face when they first met - he was constantly trying to figure her out, and, as usual, succeeding.

“What?” Coulson asks, noticing her fixed glance.

Daisy lets out a breath, pointing out their positions on the desk.

“You were good at this part, you know,” she tells him. “The political part.”

“I never liked that job.”

“But you were good at it.”

“You’re good at it too,” Coulson replies, with a gentle encouraging smile.

She shrugs. “But I don’t want it.”

“I didn’t want it either.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

Daisy wonders if he finds it weird, working under her, following her orders, having her be the boss - when most of their relationship had been about him being her superior. Friend too, of course. Everything else too, of course. But one of the first things he was to Daisy - after he stopped being her mark - was her boss.

Daisy draws her fingers over the tablet, the police dossier opened.

“Well, right now I don’t care if whoever did this is Inhuman,” she says. “I’ll figure that one out after I caught them.”

He nods.

“Will you help me?” Daisy asks him.

“Of course,” Coulson replies, taking the tablet in his hand once more, going over the details of the case once more.

 

+++

 

The nights are quiet, almost too quiet, and the quietness lulls Daisy into sleep, even when she had meant to keep on working.

Coulson would say she needs to take a break, but he doesn’t.

Instead - she gathers, when she wakes up, a few moments after closing her eyes - he waits for her to fall asleep on her chair and he takes the files from her loose grip and places her hands on her lap.

All his movements Daisy registers only in the back of her mind, they become part of her sleep.

She is aware - if not conscious - of Coulson walking across the office and then coming back to her. She is somehow aware of him getting close and putting something over her body. Daisy, in her sleep, doesn’t identify that something as Coulson’s jacket.

A cliché but time seems to stop after that, and all she knows it’s that she’s still not alone, Coulson is there. She can feel his warmth nearby, she can smell the familiar smell of him. It’s so nice, her sleeping brain hums to her, it’s so nice to have him here.

She catches him drawing back, or beginning to, and somehow Daisy speaks to keep him here, bending over, warm and close.

“I fell asleep,” she states, not caring what words she has to use to stop him from drawing further away. “I — sorry.”

She opens her eyes, the lids rising and falling on their own, like a small soft animal. She opens her eyes to Coulson’s face and wow, she hadn’t really been aware of how close it was to hers. Right here, big, nice Coulson-like face in front of her, the edges blurred by sleep.

He smiles at her.

“It’s okay.”

Daisy stirs in her chair, only in the slightlest way, and noticed Coulson’s hand loosely resting on her arm.

“Did you cover me with your jacket?” she asks, realizing.

“There wasn’t anything else in the office,” he answers, softly, smoothly, he’s not embarrassed. Daisy likes that.

His voice is very low, like a secret or a bedtime story.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I didn’t have the heart,” Coulson tells her.

What a strange expression, Daisy thinks, especially regarding Coulson, it’s not a thing she’d ever say about him. She never had to try to figure him out. He was always all heart.

She grabs the wrinkled collar of Coulson’s shirt, his shirt always look so soft, she thinks, thinks, half-dreams, there’s not much of a difference. And she brings her lips to his, or she brings his face to hers, and Coulson lets himself be drawn. Is his lack of resistance the sign of a dream? 

The kiss feels pretty real - and Daisy knows a thing or two about unfulfilled dreams, wasted fantasies. Useless hope.

This doesn’t feel like that.

She can taste his warmth and she can taste that he needs a morning shave and guesses well, it’s already morning.

With her eyes closed it’s like slipping back into sleep, but quieter than Daisy normally knows sleep to be. Coulson stays still, his lips parted (but maybe that’s just out of surprise, Daisy reasons), and his eyelashes tickling her skin. She keeps her eyes closed, willing the dream to go on forever.

A sigh - hers, she’s pretty sure, but everything is a daze - against a surprisingly soft mouth.

Daisy eventually breaks the kiss - she gives him up - as softly as she started it, as if not to startle him.

“Sorry about that, I’m half-asleep,” she tells him, letting her hands rest on her lap again, just as he had placed them, cowardly covering her ass, but also telling the truth. But half-asleep doesn’t mean anything else than that.

“Well…” Coulson starts, and Daisy braces herself for the inevitable. He pulls his jacket up, until the fabric touches Daisy’s chin for a moment. “Why don’t you try that again when you’re fully awake?”

That would be enough to sober her up, but she fears that she’s just dreaming the whole thing and if she lets herself wake up all this will be gone.

“Really?” she checks. His nod is so soft Daisy could very well be wishful-imagining it. “I was not expecting you to react like that.”

Coulson makes a noise, a questioning noise.

What was she expecting him to react like? Gently, but not receptively. The kiss was a luxury; her id taking over or something, she figures, being asleep a good excuse. She could pretend she doesn’t remember the next day. She was taking advantage, a bit. She hadn’t thought Coulson would question it too much.

“Maybe I’m full of surprises,” he tells Daisy, his mouth slightly quirked upwards.

He wraps the jacket tighter around her shoulder, beckoning her to sleep again.

She thinks she feels his lips gently graze her cheek for a moment, but she could be dreaming.

Something about Coulson’s expression when she kissed him, though - something makes her think he _will_ remind her of this when she is awake. She feels reassured by that, enough to let go, stop fighting to stay awake, even though she’d like to ask him to stay - has she done that? she might have - because who would want to let go of someone like him.

Eventually - or immediately, she can’t tell them apart - Daisy falls asleep again.

The night is so quiet, and it’s so warm inside the office, and that’s how she knows Coulson hasn’t left her side.

 

+++

 

“You were smiling in your sleep,” he says hours later, his fingers slowly combing in her hair. 

Rude, Daisy thinks, he’s not supposed to point that out.

But she’s not surprised.

She was dreaming of something nice.


End file.
